Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, founder of the San Isidro Movement and a prisoner of conscience recognised by Amnesty International, was removed from Guanajay maximum-security prison on Wednesday 8 July, according to an account relayed from inside the jail1. His five-year sentence was legally due to expire the next day, Thursday 9 July, the date Cuba's Supreme Popular Court fixed when it rejected his early-release petition in April.
Lowdown could not independently verify his whereabouts following the reported transfer. The single account comes from the activist Idelisa Diasniurka Salcedo Verdecia, who described a heavy security operation in a phone call posted to Facebook; no court filing, official statement or independent record confirms where he now is.
The legal-aid group Cubalex had warned that the authorities might open a fresh criminal case to block the release, a method it says the state has used against other dissidents, including fresh charges filed against a jailed activist in June. Cuban criminal procedure allows pre-trial detention to run for months before a new charge is formalised, so removing a prisoner just before his release date and documenting the accusations afterwards is a route the state has open to it. His disappearance during the very week Havana chose to prosecute the US embargo at the UN handed Washington a named case to raise from the rostrum.
